The Icarus 5th

Me and my friend play 40k very casually and we have developed some of our own rules to portray our view of what should happen.  Here are some of them that might be useful for you, any comments on my grammer, understandability, mistakes, on your opinions, or advice would be appreciated! Thanks.

-          +6  no cover save

• When a model fires against an enemy model, upon rolling a “6” during the shooting phase BS shot test, that shot will avoid any cover saves trying to be taken against it.  This is because of the chance that a soldier can pull off a crack shot and avoid the cover all together, or the chance that the cover was weak enough at the point of impact so the shot went right through to hit the soldier behind it.

-          Cover and Armor

• When a model is being shot at during the shooting phase it may take any cover, armor, and invulnerability saves it may have.  This illustrates the point that a soldier might wear a shield (invulnerable save), have armor (armor save), and be taking cover (cover save).

-          Intermittent models take a hit from used cover saves

• If a model tries to take a cover save from the cover of one of its own units then the cover saves that were taken by the “covering models” are taken as normal hits, not aim spoiling distractions (like stated in the rulebook).

-          Heavy Weapon Teams

• If a wound is taken on a member of the heavy weapons team then it cannot be moved, it must remain immobile for the rest of the game, unless a model from the same unit has lost its gun and there is a guardsman available to move the gun with the remaining gunner.  If there is an immobile gun in a Heavy Weapons squad then the entire squad is immobile (but they can still fire as normal) until the immobile gun is left behind, or the remaining crewman is helped by another team member that has lost his gun or partner and has decided to leave his gun to help another man move their gun.
• If a gun is hit by a glancing or penetrating hit any resulting immobile results are ignored (only a killed crew member can make a gun immobile), but the crew shaken and stunned results will remove one shot from the next shooting phase, for a minimum of 1.  This is because of the unwavering commitment of the crew to man their gun and that the gun is carried by the soldiers, not making its own movement.
• Any results of a fire death ball explosion from the glancing/penetrating hit die will result in both crew members dying in the blast, because of their close proximity to their now exploded gun.

-          Sponson guns

• Any “tank” classified vehicle with more than one non hull mounted gun (ex. IG Leman Russ sponsons, TAU vehicle mounted gun drones, SM Land Raider sponsons)may fire the additional (non-hull mounted secondary weapons) at separate targets than the main weapon fired at, unless the vehicle fired an ordinance weapon.  Note: any pintle mounted weaponry may fire at whichever target in its field of view.  This is because of the fact that these sorts of weapons would have dedicated gunners or be remotely operated by themselves, and that the main gun is operated by its own gunner.

-          Skimmers

• Any “skimmer and fast” classified vehicle must have a +1 modifier added to the armor penetrating roll (not the damage table, but the dice rolled to see if the shot glances or penetrates) when it is being shot at or assaulted.  This is because that any vehicle that can fly or hover must have a significant power source and massive engines, which are quite vulnerable. Note, this does not apply if the skimmer is in cover (50% hidden, and be liberal with the cover 46-49% covered is still good, don’t be a dick about it) as it hides the sensitive engines and hovering gears.

-          Vehicles through terrain

• If a vehicle wishes to go through some terrain, check if it covers less than 50% of the vehicle (in cover), if it is less than 50% then the vehicle may move through it.  It may push aside the cover just enough to fit through and continue moving with no terrain tests, if the vehicle moves fast into the cover the cover is blown away to a suitable distance and the vehicle stops where the cover was and take the standard vehicle terrain test, illustrating the power of vehicles over low obstacles.

-          Assaulting a Hill

• If a unit is being assaulted (the assaulters had to run UP the hill to the defenders for this to apply) whilst occupying a hilltop then the defenders may react first no matter what the initiative of the attackers.  Representing how much easier it is to defend a hilltop and how the attackers must run uphill to reach the defenders.

Flamer explosions

• If a flamer unit fails an armor save (even if it is saved by another save, cover or invulnerable) then roll a dice, on the roll of a six the model holding the flamer dies instantly and all models within 2” are hit with a hit equal to the flame weapon’s Str and AP, except models that also use a flamer, as it is assumed that they have the necessary fire protection to prevent secondary fire exposure, and would be relatively unaffected by fire.  This extra dice represents the possibility that the flamer’s fuel armor has been penetrated and then explodes in a fiery explosion.  Note: if a squad has a flamer inside it you must designate if the flamer operator has been hit by one of the shots before you take the additional “explosion” test, not after the tests fail or pass.

-          Blast weapons

• All blast weapons (except ordinance and barrage) have a chance of the wind and outward forces affecting their path.  So when firing at…
  • ¾ to Full range- x2 scatter, but can go past maximum range and still explode
  • ¼  range to 3/4 – normal scatter
  • “Blindingly close range” to ¼ range- half scatter

-          Blindingly close

• Soldiers can miss, but if they are close enough to the enemy then it is impossible to miss due to the training they received no matter how basic, or just because they are smart enough to focus because they are going to die if they miss or if they can see nothing but the enemy in front of them.
  • 3” away all shots automatically hit, if moved in the movement phase
  • 6” away all shots automatically hit, if didn’t move in the movement phase

I am back from a cool Euro-Trip, it was pretty cool, and in a 40k related note I went to Switzerland and got an engraved Swiss Army Knife which reads, “For the Emperor!”  Yup, I am back and will definatly be adding some new posts about my modelling work, so expect some more in the near future.  P.S. Thanks for all the great comments, keep up the awesomeness .

Me and my friend often play 40k together, and rivalries do ensue (like with my sentinels).  My sentinels are cheap and quite effective, but most of all FireWarrior killers.  The sight of a sentinel is enough to get his warriors to retreat, since the Front Armor of 12 is more than enough to stop any plasma rifles and the Tau aren’t exactly known for their good Close Combat skills.  So I do abuse my sentinel powers and I love killing the Tau, in fact last game I killed a few FireWarriors in close combat and my friend joked that they were all just kicked to death.  So that got me to think about building a model of this, a small diorama, and this resulted.  The brutality of war encapsulated in one model, ripping one warrior in half, exposing his guts, all in front of his FireWarrior brothers.  It took a lot of Greenstuff work to get the hands right for the flying warrior and the guts, but all in all it turned out pretty good in my opinion.

I like games-workshop, and I like Forge World, they are both good companies; but I do not like the ridiculous prices of forge world models.  I would love to build a Vulture gunship with twin linked punisher gatling cannons, but if I want to buy it from forge world it would cost 65 pounds, which is about $101.86 without shipping!  Personally this is an outrageous price, I mean yes they do have nice models and they are quite detailed, but I trying to be realistic; my stormlord only costs $99 and I didn’t have to wait to ship it, I just went to the store and picked it up, no mess no warped plastic, no problem.  This realized I also would hate to spend that kind of money trying to buy a massively expensive model and then going to a tournament and have it be restricted; so I say that if you want to buy a forge world model, the appropriate rulebooks and take all that effort, you deserve to use in whatever field you want to.  So that’s my opinion, but if you have a different one, or agree with me be sure to comment, thanks.

These poor men have been sent into battle with little to no training, un-camouflaged armor and guns, sometimes no helmets, and no re-breathers!  Though these men are enthusiastic they do not live long, but some do survive long enough to scrounge a mask, a gun, or sometimes a hat.  But, short narratives aside I find conscripts a good but for an Imperial Guard Army.  Costing only 4 points a model they are good for anything from cannon fodder, ample distraction, or leading from the front line.  I find that they are good as distractions, having a minimum composition of 20 men they do make for an unavoidable “threat” to any opponent.  Conscripts are great for attacking low rate of fire, but high power units, or for bogging down other distraction units.  I would say that they are certainly worth the 80 points for any guard army that needs some extra guns and some extra manpower.

I normally only build imperial guard models but I have recently built a space marine dreadnought.  But I built it and thought it wasn’t exactly cool enough, so I made some modifications to the original model.  Most noticeably the drill arm, which is just an old glue cap filed down and wrapped in wires, also there are some addition cables and bits attached to the arm.  I was inspired to do this from a dislike of both the chain-fist hand and the seismic hammer, which looks like a large mining drill.  I really wasn’t happy with them so I decided to add my own custom arm, which largely resembles the drill hand of the Big Daddys from the video game Bioshock, this is no accident as I love that video game.  Some other modifications that can be seen (from the other picture) are the underarm searchlight mod, allowing good night fighting capabilities, although for now my Dreadnought is just for show and will probably not need any of these specialized, or probably illegal wargear, so now the Dreadnought is nothing more than a fun distraction from school and life.  But hopefully I will buy some more Space Marine models to include into my collection, but for now I will continue to work on my existing models and Imperial Guard forces.  Though it was fun and unique to build this piece, so I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

The New Jump packs are here and awaiting use!  Squads of five to ten guardsmen can now be deployed with special jump packs, they can use a variety of weapons, but I have decided upon some of the more effective ones for hunting tanks, like the powerfist, and melta.  I have also equipped my squad with shotguns for close encounters.

My friend who plays as the Tau says they are to expensive and he can’t possiably win against me with my cheap Imperial Guard army, so we traded armies for a day and concluded that the Tau deserve an extra BS for all their units.  But this also made me notice something, I want jump jet infantry.  They are so effective and cool looking, I used his Stealthsuits to great effect in our game, so I plan on building a squad of five elite Jump Guardsmen.  I plan on taking the Assault Marine Jump pack, the scout marine shotgun (we modified the rules so they don’t suck) and mount them on a guardsman’s body w/guardsman legs.